-
Our booking engine at tickets.railforums.co.uk (powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!
Buying international tickets
- Thread starter Ken H
- Start date
- Status
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R
RailUK Forums
Have a look at what seat61.com suggests. Loco 2 is only connected to some booking systems such as Deutsche Bahn but is no more expensive for these journeys and has the benefit of being simple to use and having everything in one place.
Normally the cheapest way is to look on the website of the country's national operator (for international journeys look at the websites for both countries - there might be slight differences)
To add to ooo's comments:
Loco2.com is particularly useful if you want routes that can't all be bought on one national site, or want to mix and match class of travel.
On the other hand, for the area it covers, bahn.com has greater functionality.
For the areas you are looking for, the OeBB site (clunky IMO) and the CD site (occasionally odd English) are worth looking at, and IIRC loco.com doesn't link to CD's.
Loco2.com is particularly useful if you want routes that can't all be bought on one national site, or want to mix and match class of travel.
On the other hand, for the area it covers, bahn.com has greater functionality.
For the areas you are looking for, the OeBB site (clunky IMO) and the CD site (occasionally odd English) are worth looking at, and IIRC loco.com doesn't link to CD's.
I was using Trainline when it was still Capitaine (with the 'e') Train and found them excellent. They then dropped the 'e' prior to merging with Trainline (UK); and the latest thing is they have begun to charge a 3% booking fee - something I only spotted when I got to the end of booking a Lyon-Lille ticket. For French tickets the problem is the SNCF site tries very hard to route you to their local site, which is not always cheaper, though it is possible to work around this. Trenitalia have an easy-to-use app for their tickets. But for complicated booking Loco2 is very good, not least because it allows you to book different classes of travel on different trains, as already noted.
DelW
Established Member
- Joined
- 15 Jan 2015
- Messages
- 3,879
For booking within Germany I use bahn.com which I find straightforward and generally easy to understand.
About three years ago I was booking tickets in Italy and found Trenitalia's site quite confusing. I used Loco2 instead and found that much easier. They also found us very cheap tickets - two of us from Pisa to Milan via the coast line (at about four hours, it was slower than via Florence, but avoided any changes) for a total price of £16.50.
About three years ago I was booking tickets in Italy and found Trenitalia's site quite confusing. I used Loco2 instead and found that much easier. They also found us very cheap tickets - two of us from Pisa to Milan via the coast line (at about four hours, it was slower than via Florence, but avoided any changes) for a total price of £16.50.
riceuten
Member
- Joined
- 23 May 2018
- Messages
- 522
Loco2 have recently been bought by Voyages-SNCF, so I expect their focus will shift as times go on.
They are worth comparing with other sites, but, like many sites, have their own idiosyncrasies - I could never get them to sell me tickets from Paris to Kaiserslautern via Saarbruecken, even though there were 4 direct trains! They ALWAYS routed you via Brussels. Whilst this may have been addressed since, there are other routings that sometimes make no sense at all (and yes, I let them know about it numerous times).
AlbertBeale
Established Member
Sorry to hear about Loco2 being swallowed up.
A few years back, wishing I could still just walk up to a ticket office and get international tickets - and sensible advice - that way (as was the case even in Britain not so far back - at least at a few places), I discovered the ticket desk at the Swiss Travel Centre in London (in Covent Garden). They were able to issue tickets for not only Switzerland, but - at least - adjacent countries (probably lots of other countries, in fact, via the connections of the Swiss ticketing system?). I got tickets for Switzerland and Italy (including domestic Italian journeys) with no mark-up, and also connections between Britain and Switzerland, with "proper tickets" printed out for me. All very satisfying.
One complication, however, was that although they had machines to print out tickets on two sorts of ticket stock, not all combinations of stock and printing style were available - though what was printed, having been properly issued by what was in effect a Swiss Railways sales point, was obviously valid. Using their tickets, I was booked onto a Thello day train from Marseilles (I think it must have been), for a journey heading to Liguria, but with a break of journey for a night in Nice. So I was initially making an internal French journey on the Thello - which is allowed, though SNCF won't sell tickets for it and "regular" local tickets aren't valid on the Thello. When the charming ticket inspector came round, he took one look at the tickets I and my travelling companion offered him, noticed that they were on SNCF-type ticket stock, and said - correctly - that SNCF tickets weren't valid on Thello for that particular journey. He demanded fresh payment.
He had a reasonable amount of broken English, I can cope with a bit of French and Italian, and we had a lengthy tri-lingual discussion. At first he was insistent, but so was I; so he went away to think about it. Then he came back and said they really weren't OK - he'd worked the railways for many years, and never seen a ticket like it. After further discussions, he finally found a long reference number in small print on the ticket, tapped away at his little computer, and was amazed to find that the number was exactly what his machine said it should be for sitting in that seat. He graciously "accepted defeat" and went on for ages about what an amazing ticket it was, and how he'd have to tell all his colleagues when he got back to base. He asked if he could keep the ticket as a memento(!) - in fact I carried photocopies of all my tickets at the bottom of my luggage, for emergencies, and gave him a copy of it, for which he was profusely thankful. When we left the train at Nice, he stood on the platform and shook our hands with a big smile on his face, wishing us both a buon viaggio.
The next morning, when picking up a (non-Thello) train at Nice station to head over the border, who should I find standing on the same platform, switching trains in between rotas, but "my" ticket inspector! He recognised me, rushed up like a long-lost friend, and said he was the hero of his ticket-checkers' office after showing them my never-before-seen Swiss-issued Italian-stock ticket for an internal French journey on an international Thello train. I was quite touched by his Mediterranean warmth!
A few years back, wishing I could still just walk up to a ticket office and get international tickets - and sensible advice - that way (as was the case even in Britain not so far back - at least at a few places), I discovered the ticket desk at the Swiss Travel Centre in London (in Covent Garden). They were able to issue tickets for not only Switzerland, but - at least - adjacent countries (probably lots of other countries, in fact, via the connections of the Swiss ticketing system?). I got tickets for Switzerland and Italy (including domestic Italian journeys) with no mark-up, and also connections between Britain and Switzerland, with "proper tickets" printed out for me. All very satisfying.
One complication, however, was that although they had machines to print out tickets on two sorts of ticket stock, not all combinations of stock and printing style were available - though what was printed, having been properly issued by what was in effect a Swiss Railways sales point, was obviously valid. Using their tickets, I was booked onto a Thello day train from Marseilles (I think it must have been), for a journey heading to Liguria, but with a break of journey for a night in Nice. So I was initially making an internal French journey on the Thello - which is allowed, though SNCF won't sell tickets for it and "regular" local tickets aren't valid on the Thello. When the charming ticket inspector came round, he took one look at the tickets I and my travelling companion offered him, noticed that they were on SNCF-type ticket stock, and said - correctly - that SNCF tickets weren't valid on Thello for that particular journey. He demanded fresh payment.
He had a reasonable amount of broken English, I can cope with a bit of French and Italian, and we had a lengthy tri-lingual discussion. At first he was insistent, but so was I; so he went away to think about it. Then he came back and said they really weren't OK - he'd worked the railways for many years, and never seen a ticket like it. After further discussions, he finally found a long reference number in small print on the ticket, tapped away at his little computer, and was amazed to find that the number was exactly what his machine said it should be for sitting in that seat. He graciously "accepted defeat" and went on for ages about what an amazing ticket it was, and how he'd have to tell all his colleagues when he got back to base. He asked if he could keep the ticket as a memento(!) - in fact I carried photocopies of all my tickets at the bottom of my luggage, for emergencies, and gave him a copy of it, for which he was profusely thankful. When we left the train at Nice, he stood on the platform and shook our hands with a big smile on his face, wishing us both a buon viaggio.
The next morning, when picking up a (non-Thello) train at Nice station to head over the border, who should I find standing on the same platform, switching trains in between rotas, but "my" ticket inspector! He recognised me, rushed up like a long-lost friend, and said he was the hero of his ticket-checkers' office after showing them my never-before-seen Swiss-issued Italian-stock ticket for an internal French journey on an international Thello train. I was quite touched by his Mediterranean warmth!
YorkshireBear
Established Member
- Joined
- 23 Jul 2010
- Messages
- 8,692
Those are the sort of stories that everyone with any passion for railways absolutely loves to hear. Thanks for sharing.
- Status